"I thought President Obama's proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses was a pretty good idea. And his pledge to lower taxes for middle-class Americans was something Republicans wholeheartedly supported," Pawlenty said. "But the budget that Congress is considering doesn't provide that tax relief."

OBAMA LIED AND THE ECONOMY DIED.

WE HAVE TO KEEP HITTING OBAMA HARD AND OFTEN ON THE TAX ISSUE.

THIS IS HOW WE WILL TAKE BACK THE CONGRESS IN 2010 AND TEACH OBAMA AND THE LEFT A LESSON!

Top bankers have been leaving Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others in rising numbers to join banks that do not face tighter regulation, including foreign banks, or start-up companies eager to build themselves into tomorrow’s financial powerhouses.

Others are leaving because of culture clashes at merging companies, like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, and still others are simply retiring early.

This is certainly a concern for the banks losing top talent.

... Vikram S. Pandit of Citigroup and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan, for example, say it will be harder to break away from taxpayer support if the workers most capable of steering their banks toward recovery walk away.

THIS ILLUSTRATES ONE OF THE MANY REASONS SOCIALISM AND GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY.

THE BAILOUTS WERE A MISTAKE.

WHAT IS DRIVING OUR ECONOMY BACK TO HEALTH IS NOT OBAMA'S STIMULUS OR TAXES.

IT IS THE END OF MARK-TO-MARKET, AND IT IS THE HARD WORK OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WHO DESIRE A BETTER LIFE.

The NHS is today castigated for providing "inadequate" psychiatric help to vulnerable mental health patients, as new figures reveal an average of four deaths a day among those in its care.

Data collected by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) shows that 1,282 people in England died in what it calls "patient safety incidents in mental health settings" in the period 2007-08.

Another 913 patients - more than two a day - suffered what is termed severe harm, or permanent injuries, in such incidents.

The figures include patients who died as a result of self-harming behaviour, including suicide, disruptive or aggressive behaviour, medication safety errors and accidents, although it is not specified how many deaths fell into each category.

Campaigners claimed last night that the high death rates showed that many of the hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people who seek help each year receive a second-class service.

REPEAT: second-class service.

YET THIS IS THE KIND OF HEALTHCARE OBAMA HOLDS UP AS HIS MODEL AND WANT AMERICA TO ADOPT.

THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO WILL BENEFIT ARE THE UNIONS LIKE THE SEIU WHICH - COINCIDENTALLY - CAMPAIGNED HEAVILY FOR OBAMA.

New bird flu cases suggest the danger of pandemic is rising - Infections in Egypt raise scientists' fears that virus will be spread by humans

First the good news: bird flu is becoming less deadly. Now the bad: scientists fear that this is the very thing that could make the virus more able to cause a pandemic that would kill hundreds of millions of people.

This paradox – emerging from Egypt, the most recent epicentre of the disease – threatens to increase the disease's ability to spread from person to person by helping it achieve the crucial mutation in the virus which could turn it into the greatest plague to hit Britain since the Black Death. Last year the Government identified the bird-flu virus, codenamed H5N1, as the biggest threat facing the country – with the potential to kill up to 750,000 Britons.

The World Health Organisation is to back an investigation into a change in the pattern of the disease in Egypt, the most seriously affected country outside Asia. Although infections have been on the rise this year, with three more reported last week, they have almost all been in children under the age of three, while 12 months ago it was mainly adults and older children who were affected. And the infections have been much milder than usual; the disease normally kills more than half of those affected; all of the 11 Egyptians so far infected this year are still alive.

Experts say that these developments make it more likely that the virus will spread.

Ironically, its very virulence has provided an important safeguard.

It did not get much chance to infect other people when it killed its victims swiftly, but now it has much more of a chance to mutate and be passed on.

Jules Crittenden has perhaps the most sensible post on how to handle the Somalian pirates that I have yet read:

My own thoughts on this are similar to Keegan’s [article in the UK Telegraph]. Just sink the boats. Declare Somalia’s coast to be a no go for boats of any kind. Offshore or tied up at the dock. On trailers, on the beach. Send whatever airframes may be appropriate to the task … UAVs, helicopters, Warthogs, F-16s, whatever … and destroy every boat along the coast. Wait a day or two, repeat. Wait a week or two, repeat. Destroy any boat launch, repair, storage or harbor facilities as may exist while you’re at it. A few quick Marine shore parties, naval missile barrages and close-in naval raids may be helpful.

No boats, no piracy.

If that is considered too draconian, seeing as some people might actually be trying to fish, then there’s the more intensive, expensive, hazardous measure of patroling close to shore, and stopping every boat. Sink any with weapons on the spot and deposit those boatmen who don’t resist on shore. Kill the ones who do. Placing military teams on some merchant ships, or deploying decoy ships to ambush and kill pirates in the act might also be effective. Personally, I’d suggest another expedient from the Golden Age of Piracy. Gibbets. We had one at the entrance to Boston Harbor on a rock called Nix’s Mate, which is an aid to navigation these days as well as reportedly being cursed and bothered by strange wailing noises. (I camped on a harbor island adjacent a couple of years ago, didn’t hear anything but the jets screaming in overhead to Logan.)

The idea is, hang them and let them rot, where the others can see them. If opportunities to hang pirates at the entrance to harbors old-school are limited … and there’s that annoying lawyer/rights problem … then maybe the answer is to keep a few pirate bodies acquired in the above-mentioned operations. Drop from altitude into the middle of suspect villages and piracy bases.

Just a thought. It may sound a little too 18th century, but that is more or less the century in which Somalia dwells, on a good day. Decades of violent anarchy has left Somalia with little respect for anything but rule of arms. If we are to help Somalia enter the 21st century, it will take baby steps. Brutal baby steps.

With Obama in the White House and Hillary at State, I would NOT go "all in" on Obama having the cojones to undertake anything this drastic, what with Hillary's blather about a "21st Century Solution" (Earth to Hillary: it is not wise to attempt to nuance your way through a "21st century solution" when your enemies' mindset is mired somewhere between the 6th and 18th centuries).

In fact, I would be less suprised if Obama instead concocted a "Pirate Bailout Program", i.e. to print some more worthless US dollars and pay ransom for any and all of Americans taken in the last several days.

Christopher Hitchens wrote a great piece in City Journal a couple of years back as he researched his book on Thomas Jefferson (the first Democrat...); particularly Jefferson's decision to take on the Barbary Pirates (who arguably were the day's most famous Islamic terrorists of the Middle Ages).

The lessons drawn from history from REAL Presidents and patriots like Jefferson (a man who risked his own hanging to write and sign that Declaration of Independence--and a giant of a man in comparison to a deer-in-the-headlights appeasement-minded novice whose bona fides were "community organizing" and getting payoffs from corrupt Chicago "kingmakers"....). But I digress.

As Hitchens indicates below, the lessons of the Barbary Pirates--combined with the modern-day the failures of the Clinton Administration to act forcefully against the spread of Islamic radicalism-- are completely relevant to the Somalian (and all other) piracy; especially considering the message it sends to the enemies who want to destroy us, like Iran and North Korea. What Crittenden suggests above is worth serious consideration. Hell even the French are showing more balls than our own "Commander in Chief" is in this crisis.

On the example of Jefferson, Hitchens writes (emphasis mine):

... How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?

Some of this activity was hostage trading and ransom farming rather than the more labor-intensive horror of the Atlantic trade and the Middle Passage, but it exerted a huge effect on the imagination of the time—and probably on no one more than on Thomas Jefferson. ....

One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The infant United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas.

One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations. “The Barbary Wars were primarily about trade, not theology,” he writes. “Rather than being holy wars, they were an extension of America’s War of Independence.”

... But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)

Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman did not fail to mention the size of his own commission, if America chose to pay the protection money demanded as an alternative to piracy. So here was an early instance of the “heads I win, tails you lose” dilemma, in which the United States is faced with corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other—or indeed a collusion between them.

It seems likely that Jefferson decided from that moment on that he would make war upon the Barbary kingdoms as soon as he commanded American forces. His two least favorite institutions—enthroned monarchy and state-sponsored religion—were embodied in one target, and it may even be that his famous ambivalences about slavery were resolved somewhat when he saw it practiced by the Muslims.

However that may be, it is certain that the Barbary question had considerable influence on the debate that ratified the United States Constitution in the succeeding years. Many a delegate, urging his home state to endorse the new document, argued that only a strong federal union could repel the Algerian threat. In The Federalist No. 24, Alexander Hamilton argued that without a “federal navy . . . of respectable weight . . . the genius of American Merchants and Navigators would be stifled and lost.” In No. 41, James Madison insisted that only union could guard America’s maritime capacity from “the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians.” John Jay, in his letters, took a “bring-it-on” approach; he believed that “Algerian Corsairs and the Pirates of Tunis and Tripoli” would compel the feeble American states to unite, since “the more we are ill-treated abroad the more we shall unite and consolidate at home.” The eventual Constitution, which provides for an army only at two-year renewable intervals, imposes no such limitation on the navy.

These, after all, are the same folks who came up with the original ideas of letting (first) the UN, (second) Jimmy Carter, and (third) Madeline Albright matriculate into paying off North Korea in exchange for a promise not to build nukes--a promise they almost immediately broke, long before Bush took office.

Even President Bush let down many Americans who believe in peace through strength (myself included) by attempting yet another failed payoff of the NK's. Fool me once, shame on me...

In the latest evidence Iran is seriously planning an unconventional pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S., an Iranian military journal has publicly considered the idea of launching an electromagnetic pulse attack as the key to defeating the world's lone superpower.

Congress was warned of Iran's plans last month by Peter Pry, a senior staffer with the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack in a hearing of Sen. John Kyl's subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.

In an article titled, "Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars," the journal explains how an EMP attack on America's electronic infrastructure, caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon high above the U.S., would bring the country to its knees.

"Once you confuse the enemy communication network you can also disrupt the work of the enemy command- and decision-making center," the article states. "Even worse today when you disable a country's military high command through disruption of communications, you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country. If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults then they will disintegrate within a few years. American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot."

WND reported the Iranian threat last Monday, explaining Tehran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America's technical infrastructure. The report was published first in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, a premium, online intelligence newsletter by WND's founder.

Pry pointed out the Iranians have been testing mid-air detonations of their Shahab-3 medium-range missile over the Caspian Sea. The missiles were fired from ships.

"A nuclear missile concealed in the hold of a freighter would give Iran or terrorists the capability to perform an EMP attack against the United States homeland without developing an ICBM and with some prospect of remaining anonymous," explained Pry. "Iran's Shahab-3 medium range missile mentioned earlier is a mobile missile and small enough to be transported in the hold of a freighter. We cannot rule out that Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism might provide terrorists with the means to executive an EMP attack against the United States."

Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission, said yesterday that such an attack – by Iran or some other actor – could cripple the U.S. by knocking out electrical power, computers, circuit boards controlling most automobiles and trucks, banking systems, communications and food and water supplies.

"No one can say just how long systems would be down," he said. "It could be weeks, months or even years."

EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the earth's surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the earth's atmosphere and the earth's magnetic field.

"These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light," said Wood. "For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico."

The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the defeat of U.S. military forces.

"The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation."

Wood warned of the potential for unprecedented cascading failures of major electronic and electrical infrastructures.

"In such events, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult and would seriously degrade the overall viability of the American nation and the safety and even the lives of very large numbers of U.S. citizens," he said.

Strategic EMP attacks on the U.S. have also been considered and discussed recently by China and post-Soviet Union Russia, according to the commission. Yet, the more imminent threat, according to William R. Graham, former chairman of the commission, and Wood, comes from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and their terrorist allies.

....

The commission estimated that major corrections could be made in the next three to five years that would greatly reduce America's vulnerability to an EMP attack. There is concern within the commission, however, that the EMP threat is not being taken seriously by the Department of Homeland Security.

....

Wood said an actual EMP attack on the United States minimally would result in $20 billion in damages, no loss of life and just a great deal of inconvenience. However, on the other end of the scale, it could "literally destroy the American nation and might cause the deaths of 90 percent of its people and set us back a century or more in time as far as our ability to function as a society."

And so today, here we are. The US Navy against terrorists in a lifeboat. Here we are in a workd with an isolated nuclear North Korea, with Kim lobbing ICBM's over Japan, selling these missile technologies to a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, the world's leading terror sponsor and sworn enemy of America and all other "infidels". We have Iran's president promising to wipe America and Israel from the face of the earth.

Meanwhile, as Korea and Iran and these modern-day Barbary Pirates thumb their nose at the rest of us, all that the Obama/Clinton regime seem to be able to concoct as a response is to take this "serious provocation" back to the impotent, corrupt, anti-American UN.

Good luck with all that.

Crittenden (and Jefferson before him) had it right: President Obama has an opportunity here with these pirates to at least flex a muscle or two at minimum and to send a message to the terrorists who want us all deadpurveyors of "man-caused disasters".

But don't hold your breath.

You might want to stock up on long term food and water stockpiles though...

The Netherlands must impose economic sanctions against Israel if the new government in Jerusalem thwarts the peace process with the Palestinians, the Dutch Labor party said last week.

Members of Labor, which is a member of government as the country's second largest party, said they intended to write a manifesto on the matter to the foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, from the centrist ruling CDA party, who is largely seen as a staunch supporter of Israel.

In an interview for Radio 1, Labor's Martijn van Dam said his party insisted that Verhagen and the European Union take "concrete" action that demands Israel accept Hamas as a partner for dialog. Van Dam also lamented the Netherlands and the European Union's decision to blacklist Hamas.

Van Dam went on to call Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "an extremist who is on the brink of racism," adding: "This is not a government with much prospect for peace."

THIS IS INSANITY: HAMAS IS A GOOD NEGOTIATING PARTNER BUT BIBI AND AVIGDOR ARE BAD!?!?!? INSANE. UTTER INSANITY.

REMEMBER: THIS DUTCH LABOUR PARTY IS NOT SOME WACKO FRINGE GROUP; THEY ARE A MAINSTREAM EUROPEAN LEFTIST PARTY - LIKE ZAPATERO'S SPANISH SOCIALIST PARTY, BROWN'S BRITISH LABOUR PARTY AND OTHER LEFT-WING PARTIES ALL OVER EUROPE.

THE LEFT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THE WORLD - WORSE THAN JIHADISM, BECAUSE THEY ENABLE JIHADISM AND THWART OUR ABILITY TO DEFEAT IT, AND THE LEFT - VIA THEIR FAITH IN AGW AND HATRED OF INDUSTRIALISM AND FREEMARKETS - INHIBITS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD.

AND MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT: OBAMA HAS LONG BEEN A PART OF THIS CAMP.

TREASONOUS ANTI-WEST POLICIES OF THE LEFT - WHICH IN THIS CASE SUPPORTS HAMAS AND OPPOSES THE PLURALISTIC DEMOCRACY OF ISRAEL - IS WHY I HAVE LONG ARGUED THAT WE NEED TO DEFEAT THE LEFTISTS AT HOME BEFORE WE CAN DEFEAT THE JIHADISTS ABROAD.

Pirates seized a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden waterway, a regional maritime group said.

Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates.

He said the tugboat was towing two barges at the time of capture but there were no details on their cargo.

"This incident shows the pirates are becoming more daring and violent," Mwangura told Reuters by phone.

NATO alliance officials on board the Portuguese warship NRB Corte-Real, which is patrolling the Gulf of Aden, said a distress call came from the MV Buccaneer tugboat but communications were lost six minutes later.

They said 10 of the tugboat's crew were Italian citizens.

Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in March after a lull at the start of 2009.

REPEAT: Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in March after a lull at the start of 2009.

THIS IS NO COINCIDENCE.

APPEASEMENT ONLY ENCOURAGES THE ENEMY. ALWAYS HAS; ALWAYS WILL.

THE SOLUTION TO PIRACY IS KILLING AS MANY OF THEM AS WE CAN: BLOWING THEIR SHIPS OUT OF THE WATER; DESTROYING THEIR PORTS; BLOWING UP THE FUEL DEPOTS THEY NEED IN ORDER TO REFUEL.

WE MUST SHOW THEM AN OVERWHELMING DISPLAY OF BRUTAL FORCE IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY (YES: THE FREEDOM TO NAVIGATE THE SEA LANES IS ABOUT OUR BASIC HUMAN LIBERTY!).

THE LONGER WE WAIT THE MORE EMBOLDENED ARE ALL OUR ENEMIES - AND THE LESS SAFE WE BECOME.

Friday, April 10, 2009

In a shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate, President Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London last week.

Mr. Obama later said in Strasbourg, France, "We have to change our behavior in showing the Muslim world greater respect." Symbolism is important in world affairs. By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the U.S. president belittled the power and independence of the United States.

The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook hands with Saudi King Abdulaziz in February 1945. Granted, Mr. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but former President Dwight D. Eisenhower shook hands when he first met King Saud in January 1957. Mr. Obama's bow to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi King and not to any other royals remains unexplained.

No Americans of any station are required to bow to royalty. It is one of the pillars of American exceptionalism that our country rejected traditional caste divisions. Article I Section 9 of the Constitution forbids titles of nobility and stipulates that no officeholder or government employee may "accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state" without the consent of Congress. Judith Martin wrote in her Miss Manners column in 2001 that bowing "is not an ordinary bit of foreign etiquette one might adopt out of courtesy when traveling. ... Americans do not properly bow to any royalty. We show respect for other countries' leaders the same way we do to our own."

Press outlets have been conspicuously silent on Mr. Obama's bow. Compare this to the New York Times' reaction when former President Bill Clinton inclined a bit too far when meeting Japanese Emperor Akihito in 1994. According to the Gray Lady, "The image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent president, and the Emperor of Japan." Former President George W. Bush received thorough press attention after being photographed holding hands with then-Crown Prince Abdullah in 2005. "It clearly strikes a nerve," CBS News reported, while David Letterman satirized Mr. Bush as "officially the gayest president since Lincoln." These two cases were tame compared to Mr. Obama's full-out genuflection, which makes us wonder why it is not worthy of comment.

Mr. Obama is proving that one can be elected president without knowing how to behave presidentially. His servile gesture was fully fitting with the tone of his humility tour of Europe. In his eagerness to be loved personally, the president has lost sight of the fact that the leader of the free world also must be respected.

Now that's really strong stuff there. As far as I know, none of the presidents of European countries who use that kind of political system bowed to the king, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have policies similar to the US on how to greet monarchies, which if so would make them smarter than Obama on the subject.

Our guest today for the full hour is Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum. He also writes regularly for Jihad Watch.

Raymond Ibrahim is a historian and writer on the Middle East and Islam, and the author of The Al-Qaeda Reader (2007), which exposes al-Qaeda's ultimate motives by showings the striking differences between statements published in English for Westerners and those in Arabic for Muslims...Al-Qaeda stresses Islam's compulsory demand for "offensive jihad," that is, not because Islam is "under attack," as they claim in messages to the West, but simply to offer the world the three sacred choices: accept Islam, live in total submission to Islamic overlords as marginal citizens of an Islamic state, or die. Read more about Mr. Ibrahim HERE and HERE.

Listen to the April 10, 2009 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show, live or later, by CLICKING HERE.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Cuba on Tuesday granted three visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus the first meeting with Fidel Castro by American officials since he fell ill in 2006.

Caucus leader Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said she found Castro ''very healthy, very energetic, very clear thinking'' during his nearly two-hour session with the lawmakers....

''We believe it is time to open dialogue and discussion with Cuba,'' Lee told a news conference in Washington upon the caucus members' return. ...

Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who also met Fidel with Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said Castro ''looked directly into our eyes'' and asked how Cuba could help...

... Lee's delegation is sympathetic to Cuba, with most of its members openly praising the country's communist government while decrying U.S. policy.

... Rush of Illinois, said he found the 77-year-old Raul Castro ''to be just the opposite of what is being portrayed in the media.''''I think that what really surprised me, but also endeared me to him, was his keen sense of humor, his sense of history and his basic human qualities,'' Rush said, adding .. .''They want to have the kind of relationship they had prior to the blockade. They deserve that,'' Rush said of the Castros.

THE CASTROS DESERVE TO BE TRIED AS MURDEROUS TYRANTS.THE CBC HAS BECOME A LEFTIST CLAN OF ANTI-AMERICAN ANTISEMITIC SCUM.

(IsraelNN.com) The rumble of a bulldozer and other heavy construction equipment disrupted the quiet of Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, as police began demolition of the apartment of last summer’s first bulldozer terrorist.

The intricate work continued throughout the afternoon, despite an attempted car terrorist attack, and subsequent riots when the terrorist was neutralized by police.

Three people were murdered in the July 2, 2008 attack and more than 40 others were wounded before an off-duty soldier managed to neutralize the 30-year-old attacker, Husam Dwayat. A father of two, the Tzur Baher resident was a construction worker for the Jerusalem municipality.

A large police force was deployed on the scene and throughout the neighborhood to secure the demolition.

When someone as repulsive as that commits an even more repulsive crime, they should be made to expect the loss of a "home" they don't deserve. I recommend building a park/garden in place of that stupid structure.

(IsraelNN.com) An Arab terrorist attempted on Tuesday afternoon to attack Israeli forces securing the demolition of the home of Jerusalem’s first bulldozer terrorist.

While police were destroying the building that housed the 30-year-old Tzur Baher (Har Homa) resident who last year murdered three civilians and wounded 45 others, the inhabitant of the nearby Jabel Mukabar neighborhood attempted a similar move with his own vehicle.

The Arab driver, 20-year-old Iyyad Azmi Awisat appeared to be leaving the neighborhood, but then tried to run over a group of Border Police officers who were stationed by a square at a security post, where they were inspecting cars and people entering the area.

The officers, realizing they were being targeted, tried to flee. Three officers suffered light leg wounds and were evacuated to Shaare Tzedek Medical Center in the capital.

The commander of the Border Police unit fired at the vehicle, while additional security forces fired from an adjacent wall, mortally wounding the terrorist driver. He died a short while later.

Additional police forces have been called to the scene. Demolition of the previous terrorist’s home proceeded without interruption.

That hit-and-run attemptee can go to hell. If he hadn't died, he could have his citizenship revoked and a declaration made that he's no longer a citizen of Jerusalem.

First thing on this morning's news, before I had even gotten down my first cup of coffee, one of the local news channels here welcomed CAIR's co-founder and Director Nihad Awad for a smarmy interview, in which the news anchor appeared thrilled to be graced with the presence of one of those Moslems to whom BHO has reached out at least three times since taking office last January 20 — most recently, yesterday in Turkey.

In this morning's interview, according to Nihad Awad, who participated in a 1993 Hamas meeting in the United States — a fact apparently unknown by the interviewer — BHO is an American President who understands the following: "American Muslims have suffered tremendously since 9/11." Perennial victimhood in the typical style of CAIR, and the news anchor nodded both solemnly and eagerly in agreement as she sucked down the Kool-aid in huge gulps.

North Korea, rejecting international criticism, launched a rocket late Saturday night in what could be a step toward putting a nuclear warhead on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. and beyond.

President Obama called the launch — which defied Washington, Tokyo and others who suspect it was a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology — a move that threatens the security of nations "near and far."

Obama condemned North Korea for threatening the peace and stability of nations "near and far." The U.S. and its allies vowed to press for stronger economic sanctions at Sunday's emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, requested by Japan just minutes after liftoff.

U.S. defense officials told FOX News "nothing went into orbit" and any space launch of a satellite was therefore unsuccessful. The officials also said two stages of the missile fell into the Pacific. (Read entire article)

The coffin bearing Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, who was killed in Afghanistan on April 4, arrived at Dover Air Force Base on Sunday night. It was the first such event to which the press was given access since 1991.

OBAMA AND THE LEFT HAVE LONG WANTED AMERICANS TO SEE THESE COFFINS IN ORDER TO GET THE PUBLIC TO FOCUS ON THE DEATH OF OUR HEROES AND NOT THEIR NOBLE MISSION.

THIS IS INTENDED TO MAKE US LESS LIKELY TO DEFEND OUR INTERESTS AND OUR ALLIES.

COUPLED WITH OBAMA DESIRE TO DISARM, TO TRUST THE RUSSIANS TO DISARM, AND TO CHAT WITH IRA AND TO USE THE UN TO STOP NORTH KOREA AND IT LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT OBAMA WANTS THE USA TO BE WEAKENED.

A LONGHELD GOAL FOR THE GOOD LITTLE "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" POSTMODERN LEFTIST OBAMA.

OBAMA IS AS CLEAR A PRESENT DANGER TO THE USA AND OUR ALLIES AS KIM JONG IL AND IRAN.

FOR THIS OBAMA NEEDS TO BE IMPEACHED.

WE SHOULD MAKE THIS OUR GOAL - OUR DUTY IN 2010 AFTER WE RETAKE THE CONGRESS.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

The sign in big, red Hebrew letters reads “Welcome to Mevasseret Adumim, the Harbinger of the Hills”. A three-lane road with roundabouts leads up the hill to a police station and street lamps line the flyover that links the new town to neighbouring Ma'aleh Adumim, one of the largest Jewish settlements in Israel.

There are no houses, cars or people in Mevasseret Adumim: it is a town laid out, waiting to be built. That is because international pressure has so far prevented construction from going ahead. The area is the last piece of open land linking Arab East Jerusalem to the West Bank and critics said that to develop it would bury the very notion of a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis.

According to reports in the Israeli media, the area has been earmarked for development under a secret accord between Binyamin Netanyahu, the new, conservative Israeli Prime Minister, and his ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

Better known under its old British mandate name, E1, it is the most controversial development project in the region, one that diplomats and observers warn will trigger the collapse of the weakened Palestinian Authority, or drive it into armed resistance again.

I wouldn't be surprised if what they speak of is actually just another neighborhood in the making, either for Maaleh Adumim itself or the one that's supposed to be built to connect Jerusalem and that area, and isn't exactly a new town. But the Times would rather their subjects in Britain think otherwise and fan more flames of hate against Israel. Notice how they also call Netanyahu a conservative and speak of a "secret deal" between him and Lieberman as a way of inciting against them.

The purpose of this is simply to help provide Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim with special safety elements, and part of the city's own natural growth process. And it's been in planning for some time already. So message to the Times: shut up.

Fox News Channel has been speaking of possible difficulties for Chris Dodd, a five-term incumbent, to get elected next time around.

I google-searched "Chris Dodd Lying Weasel" and found this article in Human Events.

It is, of course, no surprise that Human Events would take Chris Dodd to task. But the article is actually a round up from various news publications. Example of one citation:

New Haven Register

“We’re not going to mince words. Chris Dodd is a lying weasel. It is hard enough to swallow that the senator had no idea that he got preferential treatment on his home mortgages that saved him thousands of dollars. Or that, simply out of friendship, a wealthy New York man, who was later convicted in a huge stock swindle, picked up much of the cost of a condo Dodd bought in Washington, or that the stock swindler’s business partner out of a love of Ireland did the same for Dodd when the senator bought a waterfront house in Ireland.

“Now, Dodd flat-out has lied about his role in legislation that is allowing employees of American International Group to receive $400 million in bonuses despite receiving $173 billion in taxpayer money to keep the failed financial giant alive…

“Dodd claims he was unaware of the AIG bonuses when he changed the language of his amendment to allow them. Dodd, however, is more than familiar with AIG. Its Financial Products unit, which helped drive AIG to the brink of bankruptcy, has headquarters in Wilton. As a member and now chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over AIG’s industry, Dodd has received more campaign money, $281,038, from AIG than any other member of Congress.

“Dodd’s lie about the bonus loophole should haunt him next year when he seeks re-election. He has broken a bond with voters who expect honesty from their elected officials.”

I note that, in recent conversations with various friends, more and more of these friends - not all conservatives and FNC watchers, by the way - are becoming aware of this fact about Chris Dodd, even though Dodd has attempted to shift blame to Treasury officials:

Sen. Chris Dodd confessed to adding language to a spending cap in the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill's passage.